November / India Reading: The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

[Scheherazade]

In November, we will be reading The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy.

Please post your comments and questions in this thread.

[Niamh]

Great! I'll pick this up in work during the week!

[Virgil]

Oh it won. I'll have to pick this up.

[Scheherazade]

This is my second attempt at this book. First time I could not pass page 20 but this time I am enjoying it more. Despite the confusing start, things seem to come together (at times too) slowly.

Roy's language is interesting; she writes beautifully but in a way that I would enjoy in short passages but not necessarily in long books. However, some of the expressions she uses are beautiful: "Estha carried [vegetables and shopping] home in the crowded tram. A quiet bubble floating on a sea of noise." Thought this was a beautiful description.

What do you guys think of this passage and gods described?

[Rahel's husband Larry] was exadperated because he didn't know what that meant. He put it somewhere between indifference and despair. He didn't know that in some places, like the country that Rahel came from, various kinds of despair competed for primacy. And that personal despaircould never be desperate enough. That something happened when personal turmoil dropped by at the wayside shrine of the vast, violent, circling, driving, ridiculous, insane, unfeasible, public turmoil of a nation. That Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance. Then Small God (cosy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own temerity. Inured by the confirmation of his own incensequence, he became resilient and truly indifferent. Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened. In the country that she came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace, Worse Things kept happening.

So Small God laughed a hollow laugh, and skipped away cheerfully. Like a rich boy in shorts. He whistled, kicked stones. The source of his brittle elation was the relative smallness of his misfortune. He climbed into people's eyes and became an exasperating expression.

(p.19)

[Niamh]

now that sounds interesting!
I havent picked my copy up yet. We where out of stock in work and i'll be damned if i go buy it somewhere else, esp seeing as i get a 30% in work!!
I also just have to finish the Crystal cave by Mary Stewart first.

[RaatKiRanii]

Scheherazade, I feel the same way about her writing so far. Roy writes beautifully, there are some passages that really snag my attention and which I end up rereading just because they sound and flow so deliciously. However, often I too get the feeling while reading that things come together very slowly. It's like a river that seems so still but you know for a fact it's moving even if you can't really see the movement.

I'm a little close to finishing the first 100 pages, and though this isn't a book I would normally read I have to say it does keep on getting a bit more interesting each time I read it.

There's a part I like:

Once the quietness arrived, it stayed and spread in Estha. It reached out of his head and enfolded him in its swampy arms. It rocked him to the rhythm of an ancient, fetal heartbeat. It sent its stealthy, suckered tentacles inching along the insides of his skill, hovering the knolls and dells of his memory, dislodging old sentences, whisking them off the tip of his tongue. It stripped his thoughts of the words that described them and left them pared and naked. Unspeakable. Numb. And to an observer therefore, perhaps barely there. Slowly, over the years, Estha withdrew from the world. He grew accustomed to the uneasy octopus that lived inside him and squirted its inky tranquilizer on his past. Gradually the reason for his silence was hidden away, entombed somewhere deep in the soothing folds of the fact of it.

- p.17

I liked the way she described the expanding of Estha's silence and how in the process the reason for his silence get buried so that just the silence exists.

[Scheherazade]

Roy is also making a great job of holding back the details till the very last moment and whetting the reader's appetite for more. Whenever I think we are finally going to find out something, Roy redirects the storyline with extraordinary skill and craft.

I am almost half way through the book but the mystery keeps becoming more and more delicious - even though I know that it is a grotesque one.

[bouquin]

Scheherazade, I feel the same way about her writing so far. Roy writes beautifully, there are some passages that really snag my attention and which I end up rereading just because they sound and flow so deliciously. However, often I too get the feeling while reading that things come together very slowly. It's like a river that seems so still but you know for a fact it's moving even if you can't really see the movement.

I'm a little close to finishing the first 100 pages, and though this isn't a book I would normally read I have to say it does keep on getting a bit more interesting each time I read it.

There's a part I like:



- p.17

I liked the way she described the expanding of Estha's silence and how in the process the reason for his silence get buried so that just the silence exists.

One of the reasons why I like this book is because of these nuggets of delicious descriptions and phrasings that Roy has so brilliantly produced.

The imagery of the monsoon rain, the humidity, the growth of molds on the walls, and the decaying house reminds me a lot of The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai.

In your opinion, what is "the god of small things"? What does it signify?

[Virgil]

Oh I just bought the book at lunch time today. I'll try to start it tonight. Looks intersting.

[bouquin]

This is my second attempt at this book. First time I could not pass page 20 but this time I am enjoying it more. Despite the confusing start, things seem to come together (at times too) slowly.

Roy's language is interesting; she writes beautifully but in a way that I would enjoy in short passages but not necessarily in long books. However, some of the expressions she uses are beautiful: "Estha carried [vegetables and shopping] home in the crowded tram. A quiet bubble floating on a sea of noise." Thought this was a beautiful description.

What do you guys think of this passage and gods described?

(p.19)

In the country where I come from "Worse Things" also keep happening. While trying to get a notion of what the passage on page 19 meant (which particularly struck me also) I was reminded of this woman I know from back home. She is poor and passive; she has never been able to keep a job. Her daughter supports her financially (if and when the latter has work). Most of this woman's teeth are missing; she can't afford to go to the dentist. But all that seems paltry stuff; she appears to accept her lot. She considers her troubles to be small. Worse things could happen, worse things could attain "primacy" - she could get cancer, her husband (who is also jobless) could die, her daughter could die, the country could fall into anarchy and bankruptcy, etc. Now that would be big. So she might was well accept the small, "contained, and limited" discomfort decreed upon her by the god of small things. Nevertheless, whenever I see her I could not help detecting (beneath her seemingly forebearing compliance) that expression bordering "somewhere between indifference and despair" so aptly described on page 19.

[lugdunum]

Got my copy and will start shortly... looks interesting!

[Virgil]

This is my second attempt at this book. First time I could not pass page 20 but this time I am enjoying it more. Despite the confusing start, things seem to come together (at times too) slowly.

Roy's language is interesting; she writes beautifully but in a way that I would enjoy in short passages but not necessarily in long books. However, some of the expressions she uses are beautiful: "Estha carried [vegetables and shopping] home in the crowded tram. A quiet bubble floating on a sea of noise." Thought this was a beautiful description.

What do you guys think of this passage and gods described?

(p.19)

I started reading last night. I must say it doesn't completely click. I can understand why you gave up once on this. But it does seem intersting. She does write pretty, perhaps a too flowery for my tastes, but that's just me. I've only read the first fifteen pages. When a writer uses elaborate metaphors in every paragraph ("a sea of noise," "It reached out of his head and enfolded him in its swampy arms," "He grew accustomed to the uneasy octopus that lived inside him") they lose their impact and begin to grate. When everything is a metaphor there is a lack of precision. But we shall see.

[Niamh]

Finally got my copy! Will start later in the week.

[RaatKiRanii]

In your opinion, what is "the god of small things"? What does it signify

At this point, I'm not quite sure what "the god of small things" is, but if i had to guess then I'd say that perhaps it is all the small things in life that adds up to the big picture of our life, the major events that shape us as people. So maybe, in the case of Rahel and Estha the god of small things is the what symbolizes all the little things and events that happen before and leading to the dead of their cousin, Sophie Mol.

[Scheherazade]

Virgil> I hear ya re. too flowery writing styles!


I have also been thinking about the small/big gods... In the face of big troubles humanity faces, our own daily troubles and worries about our own existence seem trivial. Rahel and Estha's problems might feel not important enough to bother the big god with so the small god might deal with them? Also somewhat ironic.

Not a fully baked theory yet; something I have been thinking about.

How about the repeated references to different shaped holes in the universe?